[C320-list] Catalina 320 owners group on Facebook?

[Jeff Hare]

Facebook groups are searchable, but they have their place.   I belong to at least a dozen discussion groups there and they are really suitable for social, ongoing/current events and general communication. On the other hand, it can be pretty terrible to try to find something you read a while back.  These are chronological discussions with often real content lost in nested comments.  If I don't save posts or "like" them it can be a real beast to locate that answer again in a few years or even a few months later. 

Consider that our Google Group c320-list has threaded and google searchable content going back to 2004 as well as offline downloadable archives going back even longer. The reasons for disallowing pictures to be posted are no longer the same level of concern we had 10 years ago and could be changed by simply opening up the c320-list on Google instead of having that be the searchable archive.

By opening up the google group for posting and participation directly, that would require very little work for anyone and we would still have offline downloadable archives for reference.  Members would be able to browse discussions, participate by email, web browser or both.  You could post pictures and other content and everyone could participate whether they had a facebook account or not.

We've managed to avoid much of the discussion list fragmentation over the years as new technology options come and go and that's been useful in keeping the association together.  (You can read all about that in historical discussions had over the years). There have been a few services that have come and gone over the years that promised to be the new central home for our discussions.  Few of them ended up surviving and would have resulted in so much lost historical content. 

One overlooked fact is that a central discussion with historical archive for this kind of association is a valuable resource to people purchasing/selling a c320.  They can look back and read about what previous owners were asking about, upgrading and fixing on their actual boat years ago.  There's some value in this that gets lost with having discussions fragmented across services.  (My opinion)

As a personal side note, I should begin to have more free time later this month and we should really continue this discussion.  The Catalina 320 association does also have an official facebook page in addition to the other C320 facebook discussion group.  I'm a member of some of those also.  Jaime Borrego has volunteered to help with organization and implementation.  Perhaps we can find a good way to link all the resources and funnel the discussions to the right places.

The Catalina 320 International Association board has some other things in the works this year to revamp the membership management and communication side of the association.  We'll keep some aspects of the current C320 website for a while or longer, but will hopefully be moving to a much more professional system for managing renewals, contact and member communication and the like.  

-Jeff Hare




-----Original Message-----
From: C320-list <c320-list-bounces at lists.catalina320.com> On Behalf Of Kevin Rooney
Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2020 11:31 PM
To: C320-List at catalina320.com
Subject: Re: [C320-list] Catalina 320 owners group on Facebook?

Yeah, I hear ya on all that, Stephen. I know plenty of people who just won't use it for a variety of reasons. Lots do, though.

There are certainly pros and cons. I'm a visual person, I guess, and find the ease of dealing with images and video to be useful. Note also that a FB group IS searchable.

Kevin
S/V Cecilia Ann, #211
Deale, MD
http://kevjot.com/boat/



On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 11:16 PM Stephen Cox <scox at timmin.com> wrote:

>
> >
> > There are certain advantages to the social media group versus an 
> > email list, namely the ease of sharing of images and video, and also 
> > for responding to specific branches of conversations.
> >
>
> And there are quite a few disadvantages too, in particular ease of 
> referencing, filing and finding old messages and threads on Facebook.
>
> A large number of people absolutely refuse to use Facebook for a 
> variety of reasons, everyone seems prepared to use email.
>
> Email delivers the messages directly to your email client.  There is 
> no need to go and hunt down messages of relevance.
>
> Responding to specific branches of conversations can be facilitated 
> through how you display messages in your email client.
>
>
> Just my tow pennies worth,
>
> Stephen Cox
> C320 MKII #320 Tegwen
>
>